Hopson tells Tri-State Defender the district will build a school grading system

In an interview with Bernal E. Smith II, the publisher of the Tri-State Defender, Shelby County Schools superintendent Dorsey Hopson II said this week that he and his staff are building a grading system that will help parents navigate which schools to send their kids to.

“I’ve challenged our team that we need to have a legitimate report card for all schools. If I am a parent, I ask, “What’s best for my kid?” We must set a fairly uniform criteria and framework for guiding students and parents on what the success map looks like. Frankly, there is competition from all the different kinds of educational options that challenges everyone to step it up. Consider our iZone schools and they outperformed everybody in the state. And I expect them to do it again this year. So, it is a brave new world, but it is one that I’m excited about because at the end of the day if it raises student achievement throughout the county, I am all for that. Conversely, just like we close poor performing schools that we operate, I think you will see us being aggressive about the charter schools. If they are performing poorly, we will look to close them as well. We don’t want them to have schools just for the sake of having schools no matter what label is on them. It is ultimately about student achievement/success.”

The Shelby County School board could extend Hopson’s contract later this month.

He also said he has been in discussions with Memphis officials to create a “no-blight zone” around Memphis-area schools. This week, the administrators presented to the district’s facilities committee what would happen to the nine schools the district will shutter this summer.

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“…I have met with Mayor (A C Wharton Jr.) and Robert Lipscomb (director of Housing and Community Development) on at least three occasions now. They are collecting and reviewing the data and we are about to roll out a city repurposing plan, because the same thing that is going on with the schools is going on with the fire stations and police stations and community centers. We have all of these facilities that are essentially right on top of each other. …
“So a plan is under way and I think people will be excited about it. What we have discussed and what I have been assured of is when this next wave of closures comes about, we are going to have a whole lot more support from the city. They have mentioned “no blight” zones anywhere within two miles of the school – obviously a drug free zone, a crime free zone, as well.”

Manuela Martinez doesn’t want Spanish-speaking families to get lost in the fast-changing education landscape in Memphis as the city’s Hispanic population continues to grow.

The mother of two students is among 19 parents in the first Spanish-speaking class of Memphis Lift’s Public Advocate Fellowship, a program that trains parents on local education issues.

“We want to be more informed,” said Martinez, whose children attend Shelby County Schools. “I didn’t know I had much of voice or could change things at my child’s school. But I’m learning a lot about schools in Memphis, and how I can be a bigger part.”

More than 200 Memphians have gone through the 10-week fellowship program since the parent advocacy group launched two years ago. The vast majority have been African-Americans.

The first Spanish-speaking cohort is completing a five-week program this month and marks a concerted effort to bridge racial barriers, said Sarah Carpenter, the organization’s executive director.

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The city’s mostly black public schools have experienced a steady growth in Hispanic students since 1992 when only 286 attended the former Memphis City Schools. In 2015, the consolidated Shelby County Schools had 13,816 Hispanic children and teens, or 12.3 percent of the student population.

Lidia Sauceda came to Memphis from Mexico as a child; now she has two children who attend Shelby County Schools. Through Memphis Lift, she is learning about how to navigate Tennessee’s largest district in behalf of her family.

“Latinos are afraid of talking, of standing up,” Sauceda said. “They’re so afraid they’re not going to be heard because of their legal status. But I will recommend this (fellowship) to parents. How do we want our kids to have a better education if we can’t dedicate time?”

The training includes lessons on local school options, how to speak publicly at a school board meeting, and how to advocate for your children if you believe they are being treated unfairly.

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The first fellowship was led by Ian Buchanan, former director of community partnership for the state-run Achievement School District. Now the program is taught in-house, and the Spanish-speaking class is being led this month by Carmelita Hernandez, an alumna.

“No matter what language we speak, we want a high-quality education for our kids just like any other parent,” Hernandez said. “A good education leads to better opportunities.”

When it comes to summer learning, it’s been a better year for Memphis, where a range of new programs have helped to stem learning loss that hits hard in communities with a high number of low-income students.

On Thursday, Mayor Jim Strickland celebrated that work in conjunction with National Summer Learning Day and against the backdrop of the children’s reading room of the city’s main library.

He estimated that 10,000 children and teens are being reached this summer through learning programs spearheaded through Shelby County Schools, Literacy Mid-South, Memphis Public Libraries, churches and nonprofit organizations across the community.

That’s a record-breaking number, Strickland says, in a city with a lot of students struggling to meet state and local reading targets.

Summer learning loss, also known as summer slide, is the tendency for students to lose some of the knowledge and skills they gained during the school year. It’s a large contributor to the achievement gap, since children from low-income families usually don’t get the same summer enrichment opportunities as their more affluent peers. Compounded year after year, the gap widens to the point that, by fifth grade, many students can be up to three years behind in math and reading.

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But this summer for the first time, Shelby County Schools offered summer learning academies across the city for students most in need of intervention. And Memphis also received a slice of an $8.5 million state grant to provide summer literacy camps at nine Memphis schools through Tennessee’s Read to be Ready initiative.

Literacy Mid-South used Thursday’s event to encourage Memphians to “drop everything and read!”

The nonprofit, which is providing resources this summer through about 15 organizations in Greater Memphis, is challenging students to log 1,400 minutes of summertime reading, an amount that research shows can mitigate learning loss and even increase test scores.

Reading is a problem for many students in Memphis and across Tennessee. Less than a third of third-graders in Shelby County Schools read on grade level, and the district is working to boost that rate to 90 percent by 2025 under its Destination 2025 plan.

The city of Memphis, which does not fund local schools, has made Memphis Public Libraries the focal point of its education work. This summer, the library is offering programs on everything from STEM and robotics to art and test prep.

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Parents are a critical component, helping their kids to take advantage of books, programs and services that counter the doldrums of summer learning.

Soon after the mayor left the Benjamin L. Hooks Library on Thursday, Tammy Echols arrived with her son, Torrence, a rising first-grader at Levi Elementary School. Echols said they visit regularly to read books and do computer and math games.

“We always do a lot of reading and we’re working on learning sight words,” Echols said as she watched her son build a tower out of giant Lego blocks. “Torrence is a learning child and it’s easy to forget what you just learned if you’re not constantly reinforcing.”